Janny HC Leung ’16 LLM

So I’m very attracted to Yale Law School because of the small class size. I feel that I’ll benefit a lot through close interactions with professors here, and from my semester of experience here this is what I’ve been getting, and I’m very happy with that. I’m also attracted to Yale Law School because of the diverse interests and methods that are being used here. So, instead of having a class of mostly corporate lawyers, I have a lot of course-mates who are interested in kind of public interest, legal scholarship, more theoretical issues. And here the faculty also have diverse expertise in more interdisciplinary legal studies areas that I’m interested in. And my own background—I have a dual background in law and in humanities/linguistics/language, so this is kind of where I feel more at home.

My personal interest lies in interdisciplinary areas of law. Back home I coordinate a double degree in law and literary studies. I’m interested in expanding the program that I am coordinating, so kind of different areas of intersections between law and other humanities. And here I am learning a lot about these other areas. I have also been really interested in learning about the way different sub-fields of law connect with one another and how different catenate fields of law and law interact, so from social-legal studies to law and literature, to law and philosophy, law and history, law and behavioral economics. I think Yale Law School has a lot to offer in terms of these different areas.

So one thing I love about the program is that it is very small. This year there are only 23 LLM students. So we got to know each other from the first week, and we hang out a lot. We get to meet each other in classes. A lot of times we have different classes, but there is one graduate seminar every week where we get together, we cook together, we share our experiences in other classes, we share food. It’s a very interesting and diverse group of classmates. A lot of them clerked in Supreme Courts or equivalent in their home countries, done amazing things in their life, so I feel that … I’m very touched by the close-knit community that Yale has kind of fostered, and I feel that this will be a friendship that will last.

A student perspective on graduate studies, law and humanities, and the LLM program at Yale Law School.